TOMS marries brand activism with media effectiveness

After adtech, martech and fintech could ‘philtech’ be a thing? Philanthropic technology forms part of the latest marketing efforts from TOMS, the shoe brand born back in 2006 with the purpose of doing good.

Buy a pair of its shoes and it donates footwear to someone who needs it. Not many brands were operating this way back then, but the field has become significantly more crowded in the intervening years. There’s been “a massive proliferation of purpose in business”, according to Lisa Hogg, the brand’s EMEA marketing director – along with some consumer cynicism – and TOMS can no longer lay sole claim to that particular USP.

Speaking at Advertising Week Europe (London, March 2019), Hogg highlighted an Edelman study which identified the rise of the belief-driven buyer. This found that one in two consumers will buy a brand for what they stand for, or will reject a brand for what they don’t stand for – and that’s not just the case for millennials, it’s also true of the engaged older consumer as well. And the numbers are growing as “people feel their wallets are their votes”. That’s both challenging and a massive opportunity, she suggested.